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The first house that she cleans they sit on the couch and scan her. She's always hated that. They've hired her but clearly distrust strangers. She wonders if they are high, or enjoy this weird voyeuristic service. She's not that girl but she has the numbers for that kind of thing. She wonders if they are happy. Or if they think she'll take something. It makes her want to take something. When she has a house she'll clean it herself. The second house belongs to a solitary man. He's simple despite his turtlenecks. He asks only that she always dust a few things. Mainly his writing achievements, old scrabble trophies. A picture of his mom that he has centered above his study. He usually doesn't stay and when he leaves the house he makes sure to mention the restaurant he's going to. He has money and pays well. Smiles often. This is a good house. The third house is more of a penthouse. She can see her city. See the four blocks where she grew up. The preschool where she met her first friend. They used to arrange Alphagettis into attempted words or played doctor and nurse. She saw that friend recently, bagging her eggs and oat milk at the local grocer. He still smiles with his eyes, still looks trustworthy, and kind. A few blocks past the preschool is the elementary she attended. She remembers playing red ass, the pinch and then sting of the bright tennis ball on the soft of her bum. She can still feel it now. She has three things she can always recall from around that age, from grade five to seven. The third is a happy memory. Her mother was excited to see her off. It was her first sugar shack and coming from the intense scorch of Trinidadian summers, she was fascinated by how the maple syrup hardened on the snow. She had seen a violin played before but not like this. Not with all the jumping up and down, the hips swaying from side to side. She looked around and saw other kids who were different, like her. She remembered the golden brown's sweet taste, like sugarcane, but also different. It was the first time she was not anxious. The first time she thought that maybe she could belong here. The second memory still burns. Still makes her stomach turn. The boys had chased her into a corner at recess. They teased and pulled at her hair, bounced her off the fence a few times. She had made the mistake of telling Jess she thought of the blonde boy sometimes, not realizing that sometimes Jess did too. Jess shared this publicly and the humiliation began. As her back hit the fence the fourth time she slumped to the ground. Through the slits of her wet hands she could see Jess looking from across the court, not running to tell, or running to help. She had not known cruelty until then. It was that same year but winter. The game was simple. Get on top of the hill. Hold your ground. Then you shall be crowned King of the hill. Queen in her case. She was on fire. Killing it. She had hit a growth spurt and had some size on the other kids. Even bigger than a few of the boys. She had the stretch marks to show for it. But no boy, let alone her mother, would see those for a few years later. After twenty minutes of pushing and tripping and stumbling around, fighting to hold position, she was exhausted. Jess saw this as an opportunity and clocked that she could attack from her blind spot. Knew she could catch her off guard, push her to the ground and take the crown. But it didn't quite go like that. She pretended not to see Jess coming and at the last second she dodged the assault and countered by sticking her leg out, tripping Jess from the top of the hill. She stood over Jess and watched as she cried, gripping her twisted arm. She thought of the day she told her about the crush, how scared she was, how she needed to tell someone. How she didn't understand what she was feeling deep in her stomach. She looked at Jess and felt the wire of the fence in her back again, the humiliation. She got closer, and filled her hands with snow. “Say sorry Jess, you never said sorry.”                                                                                           “No….You bitch.” All that collected snow started to melt and her hands were wet again. She must’ve shot Jess with such a nasty look because Jess got scared, tried to pull away. She grabbed more snow, started dumping it on Jess’s face, throwing it even. Giving Jess a chance to apologize never tamed the guilt or stopped her stomach from turning upside down whenever she thinks of it. She got suspended that day, Jess didn’t. She had never been cruel until then.   ​The last memory is a funny one. She still doesn’t know what to think of it. One of the boys that bullied her asked her to the school dance with a note that read. “I don’t care that you’re different, can we go together?” Not so romantic, but she had never been asked before. ​That night when the chaperones weren’t looking he pulled her in close, she had never been held like that, not with tenderness, not from a boy. He took his shot aimed for her mouth but caught her tooth. Chipped it a little. This is how she remembers her first kiss. When she’s done cleaning the penthouse she busses home. She's greeted by her cat rubbing up against her leg. She grabs a pint of ice cream out of the freezer and slumps down on the couch. She notices a stain on the cushion. She rubs at it. Nothing. She tries again. No luck. She thinks about grabbing a rag, but quickly abandons the idea. Sacha Bissonnette is a reader for Wigleaf TOP 50. His fiction has appeared in Witness, The Baltimore Review, Wigleaf, SmokeLong, ARC poetry, EQMM, Terrain, Ghost Parachute, The No Sleep Podcast and elsewhere. He is currently working on a short fiction collection as well as a comic book adaptation of one of his short stories. His projects are powered by the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council and the City of Ottawa. He has been nominated for several awards including the pushcart prize twice and BSF thrice. He has been selected for the Wigleaf top 50 2023, 2024 and for the 2024 Sundress Publications Residency and is the winner of the 2024 Faulkner Gulf Coast Residency. Find him on X @sjohnb9 or at his website sachajohnbissonnette.com

The great horned owl is depressed. Those dark feathers over his amber eyes may give him an aura of stern anger, but I know his double- whoos  are thick with sadness. Sitting high on an abandoned limb, blending into the grays and browns of the leafless trees that sway together beyond my backyard, he calls out every night. I can hear him as I'm settling into my own warm bed, alone save for the quiet dog at my feet. Whoo-whoo , he cries, as the moon rises full and happy.  The owl aches to be understood. He longs for a friend to share his meaty meals and the twiggy nest he padded with pine straw for comfort. A downy ear to hear his thoughts. Another being who knows what it's like to feel so solitary in a sky full of air.  The owl used to keep tentative company with a gray mouse. Its pink nose twitched with anxiety whenever the owl pressed the side of his feathery face against it, listening to its heartbeat and sighing silently. The mouse misunderstood, and skittered away to hide beneath a rotted log.  For a while, another great horned owl in the woods had occasionally responded to his pleas. Those nights I held my breath in the dark and listened for the reassuring, throaty voice that let my owl know he didn’t suffer alone. I hear you, but I don’t want to be near you , it said, but gave no explanation for its distance. Before long, the replies fell silent, and now his mournful appeals go unanswered.  His melancholy vibrates deep in my bones. I am well-worn with sitting alone in the dark, hearing far-off trains wail, silently soothing others but not yourself. I understand his emptiness. Last night, the owl shook me awake at moon o'clock, his hoots so sorrowful I thought one of my children had awoken from a bad dream and needed the comfort of my embrace. I rose and listened, and heard only contented breathing in still rooms. No one soothes the owl’s sobs. No one comes to ease whatever loss he grieves. His heavy and heartsick whoo-whoos  ring out in the cold woods, night after night.  Next to my house, in a small Japanese maple tree forsaken of leaves, a lonely robin sits – wishing she were an owl.   Megan Hanlon is a podcast producer who sometimes writes. Her words have appeared in The Forge, Gordon Square Review, Reckon Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, Variant Literature, Cowboy Jamboree, and more. Her blog, Sugar Pig, is equal parts tragedy and comedy. She hopes the owl in her backyard returns this winter.

Some Art makes me want to quit.  Poetry gives me a choice  of sooner or later. I believe  sooner to be better if for no  other reason than I forget  stuff like that one time  I plum forgot to sleep— O man was it great. So fucking great. Separation of Powers Change may be constant  but I believe some things should stay the same like the separation of church                           and state. Scripture says                            God watches over us for  signs of sin. That may be true but he doesn’t know                             what Heisenberg knows:                watching is a two-way  street. Seeing follows                               the fall. Absent a net  the wide-angle shot  legitimizes the split. Marc Meierkort is the author of the chapbook Break in Case of Glass  (Bottlecap Press). He is Managing Editor for Allium, A Journal of Poetry & Prose .  A Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, his work has appeared in BlazeVOX Journal, Roi Faineant , and The Argyle Literary Magazine , among others. He teaches at Columbia College Chicago.

Even a hangover couldn’t spoil the beauty of the photos from last night. Katie lay on the couch, legs dangling over the end, scrolling through them. She and Alex had gone to a rooftop bar that not only boasted glittering, magnificent drinks with names like “Hibiscus Heaven” and “Lavender Lemonade,” but bloomed with walls upon walls of vertical gardens that were bursting with flowers of every shape, size, and color. The hanging gardens , she thought when she first saw them.  One of the wonders of the ancient world. She was already tipsy enough at this point that the sight really did fill her with awe, even though these were highly artificial gardens—captive flowers, prisoner blooms—instead of the lush verdant splendor of Babylon. She’d asked multiple strangers to take pictures of her and Alex. The two of them had posed between the flower walls, and as it was her birthday night, he hadn’t rolled his eyes, not even a little. Instead, he’d posed affably for the camera, his teeth ice-bright in his smile, his muscular arm a comforting weight as he slung it around Katie’s waist.   Yes, the pictures were beautiful, if you ignored the fact that Katie was in them. She swiped past photo after photo, and her hangover jabbed more fiercely at her brain with each passing moment. In every single picture, something was wrong with her: she was in the midst of a blink, or her pupils had gone red from the flash, or her hair had swung in front of her face, or her hand was a blur of movement as she reached up to adjust the offending hunk of hair.  Alex, though. He was flawless in all the pictures, but this wasn’t a surprise. Alex always looked amazing. Maybe it was the way the light hit his face, reflecting off his features and turning him into a kind of living prism. He had glossy chestnut hair and Mediterranean-blue eyes, full lips, and a nose that could have been cut from marble. His face was so symmetrical that, when the two of them had gone to the Museum of Illusions a few months ago, he hadn’t recognized the reverse mirror for what it was. You know, the mirror that shows you your own face flipped horizontally, the way other people see you? When Katie saw her face in that mirror, she cringed visibly and wanted to back out of the room, out of the museum, out of her entire life. And Alex, her innocent Alex, shielded by his facial symmetry from the cruelty of such inventions—he thought it was just a regular mirror. Katie was about five more swipes from sending a few of the pictures to her best friend and texting her Can you FaceTune me to look like a human being. But just then, she found the picture she’d been waiting for. The picture where she looked not just decent, not just okay, but beautiful. She and Alex were standing close together. The flower walls were like vivid living waterfalls on either side of them. She’d rotated her body slightly to the side, the way she knew she needed to in order to get a decent shot—why had she kept forgetting to do this during the twenty previous photos? Had she been that drunk already?—and she was angled in towards Alex. Her face, too, was turned at just the right angle. Next to her, Alex stood half a head taller. His body was turned more towards the camera than to her, which allowed the viewer to clock the breadth of his shoulders, the vein running down the thick slab of his bicep, the narrowness of his waist. His smile, in this picture, was one of those that could light up even the darkest corners of her heart. His eyes were heavy-lidded, almost sleepy-looking, but she knew they were relaxed with happiness. “Hey Alex,” Katie called. He was in the kitchen, preparing one of his post-workout shakes. “Can I post this picture of us on Insta?” “Lemme see.” He came over and glanced at the phone for a few seconds, not bothering to examine it closely. “Yeah, sure. You look beautiful, Katie.” He kissed her on the forehead.  Katie didn’t mess around with filters and only added a few flower emojis as a caption. She was too excited to put much thought into it anyway. As she posted it, she felt a delicious swoop in her stomach. She imagined that scattering of old high school classmates who still followed her on Instagram—girls who’d mocked her, who’d smirked whenever she spoke in class—scrolling down their newsfeeds and pausing on this picture. They’d frown in confusion. Is this really Cringey Katie? They’d scan Alex—his sharp and beautiful face, his hard athlete’s body—and want him. But they couldn’t have him, because he was Katie’s. And at this thought, Katie allowed herself a quick sunflash of a grin, brilliant as a shimmer of light across water. ~ When Alex came back from his workout, Katie was still on the couch, reading a book. It was nonfiction, written over two hundred years ago, and she had to concentrate to understand it. Reading it gave her the feeling that she was undergoing some type of purification of the intellect, or the soul. She was so deep in concentration that she didn’t register Alex kicking off his shoes by the door, nor the heavy slap of his wallet on the table. She did, however, register the tenor of his voice when he demanded, still in the other room: “What the fuck were you thinking, posting that picture of me?” That tone: it was coiling darkness. It was fear thudding in Katie’s head, kicking the hangover back into being, calling up nausea from the pit of her stomach. It was neural lightning that branched red through her brain, making her sit up convulsively, speeding up her heart and her breathing, sharpening her vision so that she could see, when Alex stormed into the living room, how his pupils had blown. The black swallowing up nearly all the blue seas of the iris. Something she’d read once flashed back to her, nonsensical in this instant: People’s pupils enlarge when they are looking at someone they love.  “What picture?” she asked, trying to modulate her tone, as though Alex would follow her example. But her calmness only seemed to anger him further. “ What picture? ” he repeated in a horrible, sarcastic voice. “The one you posted on Instagram a couple hours ago. I just saw it when I was at the gym.”  “What—what’s wrong with it?”  He sat on the couch, the cheap fake-leather cushions squeaking beneath his weight. She could feel the heat radiating off his body. He smelled corrosive, like sweat and rusted metal. He shoved his phone under her nose, almost too close for her to focus on it—yes, there was that beautiful picture of the two of them. Forty-two likes already. More than most of her pictures got.  “You don’t see anything wrong with it?” he asked. That sarcasm was back in his voice again, pinched and tight, like something ready to strike. “Look closely. Reallllly closely.” He moved the picture even closer to her face.  “No!” “My eyes,” he pronounced. “They’re half shut, that’s what’s fucking wrong with it. I look dopey .” “You—you don’t look dopey. You look sweet. That’s what I thought when I posted it.” She swallowed against the tightness in her throat. “And anyway, I asked you if I could post it, and you said yes.” “For fuck’s sake, Katie. I was getting ready for my workout. I didn’t look at it closely enough. You should’ve asked again. To make sure I’d actually looked at it!”   From dating Alex for two years, Katie had had this logic embedded in her marrow: My boyfriend is a man of his word. What he says, he means. So there’s no sense in questioning it, in asking “Are you sure” about anything. That will only make him mad. And beyond that, Alex was a grown man. Since when was it Katie’s responsibility to make sure he had looked at a picture closely enough?  “You tricked me. You showed me the picture when I was distracted, then you posted it. Great trick. Really nice, Katie.”  This was so unfair that for a few moments, Katie couldn’t even speak. She could only splutter, and this brought back to her altercations in the hallways of her high school, times girls had regarded her like she was prey and lobbed words at her, things like: We think you’re really beautiful, you’ve got a kind of unique gorgeousness (giggling behind their hands) or Why do you talk like that? or  Did you really fuck Josh for fifty dollars and a hit off his blunt? The whole time she stammered, trying to find her words, Alex regarded her with his black-hole eyes. The rest of what she’d read about pupils finally made its way back to her: Pupil dilation can be a sign of stimulation of the sympathetic nervous system, aka the “fight or flight” response.      Oh yes, Alex wanted a fight. An hour of pushing hundreds of pounds of steel around in the air-conditioned gym, and he still hadn’t exhausted whatever rage he still had simmering inside of him.  “I—I didn’t trick you,” she finally managed. “I didn’t. I really liked that picture. I thought you did too.” “Give me your phone.”  After only a moment’s hesitation, she handed it over. So he was going to delete the photo from Instagram. Fine. She sighed to herself as she watched him click the requisite buttons. It was a bit dramatic, but at least she could keep the memory, and maybe put another, better picture up instead— But he wasn’t done. He’d exited Instagram, but instead of handing her phone back to her, he was now scrolling through her camera roll. What was he doing? Katie’s stomach began a slow, gradual drop. Not a plummet, but a heavy and disbelieving descent.  He got to a row of pictures of just Katie, ones he had taken. He scanned them with his fight-or-flight eyes until he found one, nodded slightly. “Okay, this one.” He handed the phone back to her, and despite herself, she sucked in a breath at what was on the screen. She looked ridiculous. Her eyes were closed in a blink, and her mouth was open in a laugh. The movement gave her a double chin, a semi-sneer. Her thighs looked enormous in her jeans. Her arms were hanging awkwardly: one reaching out for the wall of flowers but not quite touching it, the other on her waist, but her wrist turned backwards, so it looked like she had no hand.  She couldn’t have taken a worse photo if she had tried.  “Post that one.” His voice was like granite. “Why?” She hated how the word wobbled as it came out of her mouth.  “So that you’ll know what it’s like to have everybody laughing at you. See how you like it.” He stood up.  “No one was laughing at you.” She looked up at this athlete, this six-foot-two man with golden skin and hair like a figure on a Grecian urn, in disbelief. “But they’re sure as hell going to laugh at me.”  “Post it or no sex for a month.” Tears made her throat thick. She had nothing more to say anyway. So she posted it.  ~ A few hours later, nearly midnight:  “All right, you can delete it,” said Alex. “I think you’ve learned your lesson.” She had. Enough people had seen it, that was for sure. She could see that it had gotten hundreds of views. And how many pity likes? Five. One from her mother, the other four from her best friends.  She deleted the picture but she could still see it. It was branded on the inside of her eyelids, a grotesque afterimage. Her gaping mouth, her squeezed-shut eyes, her distorted body. The image gained vibrance and clarity, like a photo developing in a darkroom. Standing out livid as a scar.  It remained even throughout the night, when she was trying her hardest to sleep, Alex’s body a gently snoring mountain next to her. She drifted off into unconsciousness several times but always woke up, shivering from humiliation, sleep nothing more than a shallow puddle.  And at some point in these black, silent hours, the humiliation began to harden. To turn into rage.  ~   The next day, after work, Katie didn’t come home. She sat on the subway as it took her uptown, then downtown again, then uptown. She went to a bar and drank three whiskeys, one after the next, and avoided eye contact with anyone but the bartender.  By the time the room had become blurry at its edges, she had gathered the strength to take her phone out. She opened the App Store and searched for FaceTune, but after reading the reviews, she realized she’d need to pay way too much money. An expensive subscription, just for one photo? No; there had to be an easier way. She scrolled until she found a similar app, FaceTrue, that seemed to satisfy her two requirements: free and simple. It was an obvious knockoff of FaceTune, but even if it wasn’t as good, it would do for the moment. She downloaded the app, quickly scrolled through the Terms and Conditions (which were rendered in what appeared to be size 6 font), and uploaded one of the pictures she’d taken of Alex by himself in front of the flower walls. And she got to work.  It was so easy. She put the resize tool over Alex’s mouth and thinned his lips out. She gave him a pencil neck. Next came his arms, the ones that hung so muscular at his side. Methodically, she thinned out his muscles, turned his biceps and forearms into those of a malnourished prisoner. Now the popping veins looked like evidence of starvation rather than of musculature. When she got to his hands, she shrank them down to a ridiculous size: baby doll hands. She dragged his shirt out so that a heavy gut now hung over his jeans.   She zoomed in on his face and took stock of the details. Could she thicken his brows? Ah! It seemed that she could. With a few flicks of a brown pen, she gave him a unibrow. She wished she could decorate his face with a healthy spattering of acne, but of course an app that was meant to beautify didn’t have that feature. She settled for dotting big moles all over his face with the brown pen. She even drew a few hairs sprouting from them, courtesy of a cobweb-thin black pencil.  His legs, now. Not as fun as the rest of him, but it was still a treat to shrink them, to thin them out until it seemed incredible that he could stand up at all. After this, she scanned the picture, looking for places she hadn’t yet touched. She dragged his earlobes down until they nearly met his shoulders, the skin dangling like stretched-out gum. She colored his hair gray—not a trendy, platinum shade, but the kind of gray that an old man would have, peppered with streaks of white. Then a mischievous idea occurred to her, and she dragged the Resize tool over to his crotch. She took the size down, and down, and down again, until it appeared that he had a vortex in the seam of his jeans, an absence of mass so great that it sucked in everything around it.  Katie regarded her masterpiece. Alex barely even looked human anymore. She smiled a giddy, drunk smile, and posted it, tagging him and as many of his friends as she could.  ~ By the time she got home, it was past midnight, and all the lights were off. Alex was asleep. She crept into the apartment and closed the door as quietly as she could behind her, then darted to the back room: she rarely used it, but there was a couch in there, and it had a door that locked. She’d crash here out of necessity, and tomorrow she’d start looking for a new place to live.  When she woke, it was with a furry mouth, sore eyes, and the beginnings of yet another hangover. A terrible sound echoed in her ears, although it must have been part of a dream. She had never heard anyone scream like that in real life.  Still groggy, she rolled over on the couch and checked her phone: 7:30 A.M.  She sat up, panic suddenly unspooling inside her. Alex must have left for work by now. Which meant he’d seen the post. Along with all of the friends she’d tagged.  Fuck, she thought. What have I done? She scrambled for her phone, intending to delete the image and leave the apartment as soon as she could— A sudden scream pierced the air. It was coming from Alex’s bedroom—a lurching, wailing cry. Something about it sounded…not quite human. All the hairs on her arms stood straight up and her spine turned icy . What the fuck is that? The screaming died away, and then there was a sharp banging on her door. “Katie! I know you’re in there! Open up!”  But Alex’s voice didn’t sound angry, the way it had all the other times he’d hammered on the locked door of this room. It sounded pained. It sounded….terrified.  “Calm down, Alex, I’ll delete the picture. I’m sorry. I was drunk.” Her voice was shaking. Something else occurred to her. “Why aren’t you at work?” Surely he wasn’t so traumatized from this picture—clearly Photoshopped to the point of absurdity—that he had stayed home from work?  But he had, after all, been screaming. Maybe that was what had woken her a minute ago.  A sarcastic laugh from the other side of the door. “Oh, like this? You think I can go to work like this, you fucking demon?” He screamed the last few words. His words sounded constricted, like someone had their hands around his neck.  “What the fuck?”  She stood up. “It was just a picture.” Anger overtook her fear, and she walked to the door. “It was just like what you did to me, except mine was so clearly Photoshopped, so clearly not you, that nobody could possibly think—” She flipped the lock and swung the door open. Her next words died in her throat. Standing before her— leaning  before her, rather—was a monstrosity. A stick insect with a human head, a bundle of twigs the color of human flesh. The creature’s hideous head wobbled, held up by an impossibly thin neck that bent and swayed like living rubber. It tottered on sticklike legs that seemed incapable of fully holding up its weight: it had to lean on the doorframe to stay upright. In fact, it struggled to even hold onto the doorframe. Its hands were so tiny that its fingers were tiny, barely visible stubs. No , something inside her said. Not “it”. Him.  Because it was Alex. Alex, exactly the way she had changed him. His unibrow, the hairy moles swarming his face, the emaciated limbs, the massive belly sagging towards the ground, the dangling earlobes, the gray hair— His blue eyes were the only things she hadn’t changed. They stared out at her: helpless, panicked, lost. Then his legs wobbled madly, and he collapsed onto the floor with a slap of flesh. Katie felt like she was about to vomit. Slowly, Alex began to hunch over, his huge gray head sagging toward the ground on a thin pink stalk, like a dandelion gone to seed. The gurgles and gasps from his mouth were growing fainter, as though he couldn’t get enough air through the narrow throat she had created.   “What…have you…done?” he moaned, sounding like it was taking all of his effort to speak. “What…what is this? What did you do to me?” “I—I just used FaceTune—”  But no, she realized. That wasn’t true.  She’d used FaceTrue.      Amy DeBellis is the author of the novel ALL OUR TOMORROWS (CLASH Books, 2025) and the novella THE WIDENING GYRE (Lanternfish Press, 2026). Her stories appear in X-R-A-Y, Uncharted, Write or Die, Trampset, and elsewhere. Her writing has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the Best of the Net. Read more at amydebellis.com .

Atlas  Stop telling me of my strength  Instead  Say  That sometimes the world will offer scraps  And glass pieces  And dimly lit bulbs  Tell me that life is tricky  And God’s will imperfect  And brokenness abounding  Tell me that we are all made up of fragments, residual memories and glimpses of agape  Stop telling me of my power  Instead  Say  That things fall apart and unravel  Tell me that my world can stop with a daunting cruelty that sets other worlds in motion  Tell me that I am not atlas  Tell me that I am not atlas (nor should I be)  Tell me that I can still bask in the sun  With eyes sunken  Spirit uneasy  And heart wandering To double dutch when you don’t know how  Is to form arches  Compact  Syncopated  Then drive into earth  Concrete  Let ropes whir  Contract  Close to face  As tension  Caught in the middle  To let the girl  With slicked bun  Be spirit guide  Let me show you  To be in the pocket  To drum  To airbend May 1st Serenade  You siren and I hold breath under water We extinct whatever is anchor and binding Is caught and barnacle, mold and tempest   We live hymnal and free together  Swim to fault plain and epicenter  Meet you there, meet you there   We extinct whatever is rubber and ornate Only the soft can survive  We siren into be-gone barnacle and tempest budding   Track salt and sulfur scent above eventide Swim to fault plain and epicenter  Feel you there, feel you there Jess Grant-Domond (she/her) is a Poet and Community Psychologist based in Chicago, Illinois. First drawn to poetry as a method of survival, her poems are often inspired by the creative wisdom of her Black-Caribbean lineages. Jess is an ISL Alum and published in The Health Promotion Practice Journal and  Black Minds Mag . She has appeared on the BU News Service and the HPP Podcast. She has performed throughout Boston, New York and has facilitated Poetry workshops and panels in partnership with community organizations. She can be found on Instagram @ jessicagrantdomondpoetry .

Something is different in my house. I noticed it changing and I’m not sure when it started or how far it goes. Actually, it’s not really correct to say “something,” I think. Probably more accurate to say “some things.” Though if it’s connected – which I’m sure it must be – then it does add up to a single something . I don’t know who is doing it, or why, or what is going to come of it, but I’ve got my eyes open and I need to talk about. I’m paying as close attention as I possibly can. Hopefully it’s enough. I want to make sure I know what’s going on before things get worse, before things are so far that it’s too late. ​I first noticed the vegetable oil – I have a regular bottle of vegetable oil, in the cupboard next to the stove, just like everyone – I noticed it was different one day. It had been swapped for a different bottle. Same brand, same amount of oil inside, as far as I can remember (as far as I can keep track of how much oil I expect to have on a day to day basis). The attention to detail was impressive: not just the brand, but it even had that layer of oil around the outside like the old one. But as soon as I picked it up I could tell it wasn’t the same. The bottle had been swapped for something with a sinister energy. Brushing off the notion, and maybe against my better judgement, I cooked with it anyway and after a few bites could immediately tell something was wrong. The food was wrong. My stomach turned, head started to squeeze and fog. So I dumped the plate but I kept the oil just in case. I didn’t know what was happening, but if someone had done this on purpose I guess I didn’t want them to know I had noticed it yet. ​ After that, two days later, it was the ottoman. Like with the oil, they’d done a very good job, whoever it was doing this. It looked almost exactly the same. It’s possible it had been swapped for several days before I noticed, no way to know for sure. But a few days after the oil was wrong I realized it, too, was different. The fabric did not quite match the chair anymore, the stuffing wasn’t the same, a few of the stitches were rushed, and most telling of all three of the feet had those felt pads on the bottom. Two of mine had been missing for years. There was an extra suddenly. It even smelled a little different. There was a smell of tobacco or something, it almost smelled rotten. I inspected it closely and then stood back, looking at it, looking around the room. It brought with it something vile – quiet, but vile. ​At this point I knew for sure it was happening that I couldn’t define exactly. The next day I realized the same thing had been done with the book I was reading. The printing was wrong: the text on each page was slanted, the kerning was off, the color on the cover wasn’t quite lined up. Just everything was a little bit wrong. I slid the book under the false ottoman. I’m not sure why, I just needed to do something. It showed them I was paying attention now, proved I noticed. It wasn’t happening without my awareness. I locked every window in the house, double checked before going to bed that the front door was locked and deadbolted. Probably a futile effort, but maybe I could simply prevent them from coming in and it would stop. ​ Over the next week I noticed more and more things had been subtly replaced by copies that all had their own kind of darkness about them. Clothes hangers, my sheets, handsoap in the bathroom, the lightswitch at the top of the stairs, the kitchen faucet, multiple cans of beans, most outlets. All replaced by uncanny facsimiles. My home was becoming something different, transforming around me piece by piece. One evening I noticed that a few of the steps had been changed somehow. Looking carefully I could just detect scratches in the wood where the old planks had been pried away to be replaced by imposters. I wrote it all down whenever I noticed it. Date, time, object, and any additional observations, trying my best to describe the spiritual difference present in the new items. ​ So each day began with an inspection of every room, taking inventory of every change I could find. By the end of the second week I had filled an entire notebook and moved on to another. I marked the dates on the completed record and hid it behind some loose panelling in my bedroom closet. The atmosphere in each room had completely shifted. Lightbulbs felt different. Everything was more and more ominous as each familiar piece of home was replaced by a malevolent counterpart. One cloudy morning – after noticing a particularly large number of new objects and feeling a frantic, distressing energy oozing through the house, seeping into my brain through my ears – in a moment of desperation I found a piece of poster board and made a sign. STOP DOING THIS  I scrawled with permanent marker in blocky letters. I placed the sign proudly, boldly, defiantly in the entryway that night. Of course at dawn I found that it, too, had been replaced by an evil lookalike. As time went on the copies weren’t even as exact. The differences were getting more brazen, unconcerned with maintaining the illusion. Completely indifferent to my reaction. Looking at the other houses on my street from the window it was clear some version of this was happening elsewhere. Maybe not every house, but the street itself was starting to feel different. I struggled to get restful sleep, and when the mattress was finally changed I resorted to sleeping on the floor of the living room. This put me in proximity to the front door, so I could be sure nobody was coming in while I slept. I ate only food I’d brought home that day, unable to trust any food in the house. ​The second night on the floor of the living room I lay on my back staring at the dark ceiling. Unable to sleep, something caught my eye just outside. With a tingle running from my neck to my finger tips I turned to see a shadow move past the window. At first I stayed still, I didn’t want them to think I was awake and watching. Shadowed figures, I think three, walking around the house and leaning in to peer through my windows. Without a sound, they left, disappearing into the night leaving nothing behind. When morning came I inspected the yard and found their footprints in the soft dirt near the foundation in a few spots. Smooth bottomed shoes. Not mine, definitely not the boot footprints of a utility worker or anything. ​ One afternoon I left the house, being as conspicuous as I could be doing something so mundane. I locked the door, stood on the sidewalk and looked at my phone for an extra moment to make sure I could be seen, and finally got into my car to drive away. I drove only as far as the parking lot at the end of my block and here I waited. Nothing happened, nothing except the regular here-and-there of the community, for an hour and forty seven minutes. That’s when something did happen. I watched someone approach on foot, carrying a box, toward my street. As they got closer I realized they were wearing something on their face. I strained to try and see what it was, wishing I’d brought binoculars or something – do I even have anything like that? I don’t think so. They walked at a steady, confident pace. Not rushed. Not concerned about being seen. When they’d drawn near enough to be see clearer, a flush of hot, confused, fear burst from stomach as I could finally recognize what it was: they were wearing a crude, rubber mask of my own face. ​ The masked stranger turned the corner and walked to my house. They stepped up to the front door and slung the box casually under one arm, pulling a huge ring of keys from a jacket pocket. They unlocked the door of my house and entered. The stranger was inside for eighteen minutes, according to the clock on my dashboard. After that time, they appeared again, locking the door behind them and going off down the street the other way before disappearing out of my view. After taking a beat to collect my nerves I rushed back into the house to look around. It didn’t take long to spot some changes, but by now I could never be sure I’d seen all of them; the curtains, the cheap old Amazon shoe rack I’d been carrying around since my first apartment after college, bowls in the cupboard, the TV remote. In the basement I found a box of nails leftover from an old project and started nailing down everything that I could. I tried zip tying cupboards shut and gluing things in place, stapled the carpets and couch cushions. They had keys to the front door. They could come and go at will. The only definite way to make sure things were safe would be remain in the house all the time. It would take some preparation, but I could try to do it quickly and then stay put as long as possible. Hopefully in that time I could find a solution or someone else could finally do something about it. Eventually someone would have to. I got a big bag of rice, lots of beans, frozen vegetables, boxes of pasta, the biggest value pack of toilet paper I could find, multipack bars of soap. Shelf stable, cheap, basic. Just enough to keep going. Back inside my home (I noticed some of the zip ties on the cupboards were a different color than they were when I left), I put the frozen food away and left everything else out visible on the counter. I nailed the door shut and glued all of the windows on the first floor. Then I settled in, sank into survival. Numb. Days have passed. Shallow and joyless days, dark and slow. I don’t dare look to see if new perversions have been made around my house despite my constant vigilance. Then one night I’m slowly pulled out of my shallow sleep. There is a smell, a new smell in the house. Familiar but out of place, and as I blink and come to my senses I realize it’s smoke. Stumbling I make it to my feet, looking in every direction and following the smoke throughout the house to find my basement engulfed in flames. The conflagration far spread, swallowing everything it could and reaching up to house above. I grab a bucket of water but know it’s hopeless; the fire is already too advanced. Still I dump the pitiful amount of water into blaze, meaningless. My only hope is to get myself out while I can. Of course, I remembered, the door was nailed shut, the windows all sealed. I’ll need to break out. So grabbing a hammer I make for the closest window and smash it, shattering glass exploding everywhere, cutting my hands. Almost out of breath already I climb out and fell the short drop from the first story to the ground outside. Collecting myself I walk to the sidewalk, unsure what to do next. I see on the street so many people to be out this late. All my neighbors, people whose faces I recognize but whose names I do not know. The street is full. Every house belching black smoke, many houses already illuminated in bright, hideous orange as the entire neighborhood burns around us. No sirens coming to signal help, the only sound is the crackle and shudder of homes buckling and dying. I don’t know what else I could have done. Charlie DeMott Wildey is a writer from Upstate New York. His novel Lightning Bolt is available from NFB Publishing, and his writing can also be found in The Rialto Books Review Vol.020, Roi Fainéant Press, and his Substack “Feed Charlie.”

We wouldn’t be able to undo it if we kissed. That is lust to me -  Something to covet. Even if : You never told anyone I would know, we would know. A decoy To command inclination Sharing breath like ancients. Methanobrevibacter oralis, that old microbe The place where you form words  Close it in language impotency.   Where you eat Where you vomit Where you tell me you don’t love me It would mean something.  Bird Ugly He came home today with Bird Ugly One eye big One eye small This is how he sees the world. It’s beautiful, I say As I try to display it on the bookshelf. I turn him profile  This poster painted Papier mache Primary school object That is my mistake. I show one eye to the world I forget the beauty of both Of difference. Tunnel Vision You’ve made a home for the ghosts, Living in lost peripheral vision. All the things once known: A dead mother who stands in the corner of the room Twenty five years after her death. Nothing is at the end of the tunnel There are no goals to meet  No holidays to book, nothing new   What is no longer behind you is beside you Everything is balanced These ghosts -  They walk with you. The Changing Shape of Me   I am amorphous. I wake unbloated. Changing shape. Expanding. Decreasing. Bigger, smaller. Stretching skin. Thick or thin. Big or small, round as a ball. Wear black to look small. Don’t take up too much space. Don’t wear horizontal stripes Don’t rub self love in their face. That top hides a multitude of sins. Pass the scissors. Cut the label out. Charlotte Cosgrove is a writer and lecturer from Liverpool. She has published two collections of poetry and is the editor of Rough Diamond poetry journal.

The Return Dr. Harris is driving. I sit beside him, watching the streets I am told I’ve driven through a hundred times—houses, strip malls, traffic lights—but none of it feels familiar. This whole process has been… strange. Frustrating. At home, I pass photos of myself—smiling, surrounded by people I don’t recognize—and I don’t feel like the person in them. Sometimes I catch flashes—quick, disjointed things that vanish before I can hold them. I remember walking across a college campus—trees, buildings, footsteps echoing.  Or maybe I dreamed it.  I can’t name the school. I don’t know what I was studying. Dr. Harris explained it all—the accident, the amnesia, the false memories—but it always sounds like he’s describing someone else’s life. Not mine. I trust him—mostly—but sometimes it feels like he knows more than I’ve told him, naming fears I haven’t said out loud, even voicing things I hadn’t yet let myself think. Perhaps that is what all good therapists do. I asked my parents once if we’d known him before. They said no. They did mention that he went to my high school. Years ago. My parents say Dr. Harris is the right one for me. But when they think I’m not listening, I hear it in their voices. The tension. The worry. How long…? What if he doesn’t…? Should we…? “We just want him back ,” they say. Not me. Him. I keep wondering what happens if I never remember. Am I someone new now? And if I do remember… does that make this version of me disappear? I don’t know which one I want to be. I glance at Dr. Harris.  The silence in the car suddenly feels oppressive.  I try to say something—anything—to break it. “How am I this confused?” I ask. “About everything?” He answers without glancing over. “It’s part of the process. Part of what we’re working through.” A beat. “We’re here.” I hesitate. “Are we going in?” “Principal Keller’s expecting you,” he says, motioning toward the gate. “Just head through there.” I pause. “You’re not coming?” He shifts slightly, eyes on the street ahead. “You don’t need me there,” he says. “It’s best this way.” He grips the wheel a little tighter but doesn’t say anything else. I open the door and step out. I glance back. He’s still in the car—hands on the wheel. Like just being here puts him on edge. What’s up with him today? *** Dr. Harris remembers the old campus: long corridors, open soccer fields, tall trees. The layout had been open, loosely structured—easy to move through, easy to slip away from. It gave kids room to push limits, to take risks. He thinks of the halls, the bell, the heat. Laughter. Voices filed away long ago—until now.  He shuts it down. Not now,  he tells himself. His chest tightens—and stays tight. He tells himself some people get second chances. Not everyone. Not always. He blinks. The present returns. The new campus is something else—manicured lawns, evenly spaced trees, gleaming glass façades. It looks imported—from somewhere colder, wealthier. High walls surround the entire compound. You can barely see inside.  He finds himself wondering: What are they trying to keep out? Or in? He imagines a dress code. Pressed collars. Probably sweaters. He’d said as much to his sister, the last time he saw her at her place. Her twins go there now—enrolled at the same school he can barely stand to look at. She didn’t hesitate. “You never see us—and when you do, it’s just to criticize.” “Maybe you should look at your own choices first.” “More structure might’ve helped you too, you know.” A pause. “Sorry, Daniel. That was harsh.” “It’s all right,” he said. He left not long after. He exhales slowly, careful not to let it register. Getting Sam’s parents to agree hadn’t been easy. They asked endless questions, like they were working off a list—trying to sound brave, measured, but not quite managing it. But it was the mother, her voice suddenly tight and brittle, who asked the question at the end: What if he doesn’t come back? What if this doesn’t work? He told them this was their best shot. But memory’s fragile. Nothing’s certain. Sam seems ready for this—whatever comes. But his parents… he’s not so sure. Maybe it’s not just Sam they want back. Maybe it’s before. Back when bad things didn’t just… happen. But they can. And they do. He thought about saying it. Decided not to. Still, he kept pressing—not just for Sam, and not just for his parents. For him too. The School I reach the gate. The guard waves me through without asking anything. I head toward the main building. Inside, a group of kids—nine, maybe ten—race down the hallway, shouting and laughing. There’s something about the sound, the rhythm in their laughter. “Where’s the school store?” The question spills out before I know I’m going to ask it. One kid points. “End of the hall, to the left. Same place it’s always been.” He squints. “Why’re you going there?” I shrug. As I turn away, I hear a whisper—just loud enough to catch. “Weird.” “What?” I snap—too fast. Another kid grins. “It’s just that… that place is weird.” But something about the way he says it—the half-smile, the shrug—I almost laugh. I reach the store, enter, and turn left toward a door with a sign that says Uniforms . I stop for a moment. Like I’ve been here before. Then I push it open. A boy sits behind the counter. An older man—his back to me—is stacking shirts on a shelf. The boy looks up. “Can I help you?” “I think I’m here for uniforms.” The older man turns. His eyes light up. “Hey, kid. Look at you.” He sets down the shirts like they suddenly don’t matter. He grins like he knows me. “How’ve you been? What can we help you with?” His happiness is weirdly contagious.  I feel it too—just a little. I keep looking at his face, hoping something will click. But I can’t tell. “Yeah,” I say. “I was going to see the principal, but… I wanted to check on the uniforms instead.” “That’s fine,” he says. “But I think it’d be better if you see the principal first.” “Yeah. You’re right.” “Come back after,” he adds. “Or whenever. I’d be glad to help.” I want to stay. But I step into the hallway anyway. Something shifts.  The color of the walls. The echo of footsteps. Running late for class. I’ve done this. I think.  Their faces flash through my mind—blurry but bright, sudden. The blond one. The tall one. The joker. My friends.  A warmth moves through me—quiet, sudden. But it feels fragile. I reach for their names, their voices—but I can’t find them. I want to see them again, so I head toward the 12th-grade classrooms. I stop at the first one. I peek through the door. Students fill the seats. I spot a blond kid near the window—he looks familiar. “Mike!” I say, before I even think. He looks up, confused. Nudges the person next to him. A quiet laugh. He’s not Mike. Not even close. Why did I think he was? I freeze.  What was I thinking? What are they saying? I step back. I shouldn’t be here. I head toward the principal’s office. I feel the floor shift sideways beneath me. I reach for the handle—more to steady myself than to open the door—and pause. God, I hope everyone forgets that. Or maybe that I do. Then I open it. A woman at the reception desk looks up and smiles. “Hi,” I say. “My name is Samuel Becket. I’m… here to see the principal.” Her smile widens. “Of course, Sam. We’ve been expecting you.” Another woman appears—older, sharp-featured, her hair pulled back tight—but her voice surprises me, softer than I expected. “Hello, Sam,” she says. “Please, come in.” We sit, and she takes her time arranging the desk—phone turned face down, folder centered, pen lined up beside it—like she needs everything just right before she speaks. “How are you doing?” she asks. “I don’t know… I guess I’m a little confused. That’s kind of why I’m here. Dr. Harris says I went to school here but never graduated. It feels familiar… but I don’t remember it well.” “Okay. Let’s take a look—maybe this will help clear things up,” she says gently, opening the folder and sliding a photo across the desk. It’s me. And my friends. Mike—the blond one. Jimmy—the tall one. Manuel—the joker. We’re in our jerseys, soaked with sweat. Shouting, mid-jump. And I feel it: the heat, the cling of the jersey, the smell of grass. Someone kicked me—hard. I hit the ground, furious. I rub my leg now, without thinking. “That’s the day we won the state championship,” I say. She hesitates. “That was the championship game, yes.” She looks at me. “You all played your hearts out. But it wasn’t a win that day. Still—no one who saw it will forget that game. We were all proud.” “But we’re all smiling.” “It was your last game. You celebrated anyway.” I nod. But something inside me tightens. How do I know what to trust? She reaches into the folder again. “This is your graduating class.” I take the photo and start scanning. Mike. Jimmy. Manuel. Claire. But not me. My stomach tightens. I press my thumb into the glossy paper, hoping—stupidly—that something might change. Nothing. Principal Keller watches me for a moment. Then softly: “You were part of this place, Sam. We missed you at graduation.” I just stare at the space where I’m not. “I should finish high school.” “Yes,” she says, smiling. “Just a few steps left.” I hesitate. “But… why didn’t I graduate?” Her smile fades—just slightly. “You know what?” she says, soft. “Daniel is waiting for you. Dr. Harris, I mean.” I nod. “Thank you, Principal Keller.” “It’s good to see you, Sam.” She pauses. Her voice catches, just a little. “Really good.” “And say hi to your parents,” she says quickly as I’m stepping outside. My parents. They make me feel safe—always there, always ready to help. I appreciate their attention, but sometimes it feels like they think I’ll break. Like they’re waiting for me to come back—to be who I was before. But I’ve been here the whole time. I take the long way back. The path outside feels clearer than the one through the building. I’ve walked it before. With a girl—Andrea? Her arm brushed mine. She laughed. I want it to be true. The vending machines—buzzing, faintly glowing. Manuel snatched the Coke from my hand before I could open it. “You’re too slow,” he said, already drinking. I shoved him. Hard. He nearly dropped it—then cracked up, head thrown back. For a second, the anger rises—hot, sudden—then fades, like it was never mine to hold. The Road I reach the car.  Dr. Harris is behind the wheel, window down, his arm resting against the frame. He glances over as I open the door. “How did it go?” “You were right,” I say. “I’m starting to remember.” Something in his posture shifts—just slightly. “That’s good,” he says. “Want to head to the park? Eat there?” I nod. “Yeah. That’s the plan. My mom packed sandwiches.” Heller Park isn’t far. We should be there soon. We pull onto the street and drive in silence for a few minutes. Then Dr. Harris starts asking questions—steady, clinical. Like this is routine. “When did the school start to feel familiar?” “What were you doing when you remembered your friends?” “Do the memories feel like yours… or like they belong to someone else?” He asks them one by one. Calm. Measured. And for once, I don’t feel lost answering. I tell him about the uniform store. “Yes. Jimmy used to work there. You, Manuel, and Mike would stop by all the time. You loved making up stories about the old school—scaring the little kids while they waited to get measured. Mr. Olivera said it was like the four of you ran the place.”  He pauses, then adds quietly, “I always liked Mr. Olivera. He used to tease me that I was too loud, talked too much… but he was always asking me to stop by anyway. And I did. Until I couldn’t.” I turn toward him, surprised. “Really? Tell me more.” “I don’t remember much more, Sam,” he says, voice soft. “And honestly… I’m not sure I want to.” I think of asking something else—but stop myself. He slows down—but not like someone being cautious. Like someone deciding whether to keep going. Then, just barely, his foot presses down again. The car creeps forward. That’s when I realize—we’ve been driving too long. The road narrows. Trees press in, blocking the sunlight. Something about it feels off. The seatbelt feels tighter. Up ahead, the road forks. One side is blocked—orange cones, a DETOUR sign leaning to one side. The trees. The curve. It all comes back—before I know why. My chest tightens. I grip the seat. Someone’s yelling. Tires screeching. Then silence. The car slows. I glance over. Dr. Harris’s knuckles are pale. He looks… off. Unfocused. Distressed. “What’s wrong?” I ask, before I can stop myself. “This is where the accident happened,” he says. “You and your friends were lucky.” He pauses. “It’s not always like that.” He says it like it hurts. We both exhale—quiet, almost at the same time. Back there he looked… scared. Not just for me. Now the car is quiet. We’re both here, but it feels like we’ve each gone somewhere else. The Park We pull into the park. Dr. Harris parks beneath a tree. Everything feels quieter here. “Let’s go sit on one of the benches,” he says. We find one in the shade and sit. “Can you tell me what happened?” I know he’s told me before. But this time, it feels like the story is mine. Dr. Harris watches me for a moment before speaking. “You and your friends were on that road. Something went wrong.” The sound comes back first. Engine. Whiplash. Pain. Then Nothing.  My heart races. “It was me,” I whisper. “I was going too fast.” The words spill out—sharp, reckless. And I feel it: the weight of what I did, what I almost did. “It was an accident,” he says—his voice is sharper than before, too fast. I flinch. He notices. Then, softer: “Maybe it was the road. Or the speed. But it’s done now.” He shakes his head, gently. “You hit your head. Coma for weeks. Post-Traumatic Amnesia.” “They said the car overturned several times. It was the trees that finally stopped it” A pause. “We were hoping the school might jog something.” He glances over at me. “Looks like it did. Accidents happen, Sam. Your friends made it through. And you will, too.” He leans back slightly, arms behind him on the bench. “I don’t know what I would’ve done if my friends had been hurt,” I say. I feel it again. The almost. Not just what happened—but what didn’t. Silence. I glance over. Dr. Harris looks pale—like someone pulled the ground out from under him. “What’s the matter?” I ask. He’s quiet for a moment. When he finally speaks, his voice is different—thinner, rougher, like it costs him something. “I had an accident there too.” I sit up. “When?” “When I was your age.” “And what happened?” A long pause. Then his voice shifts—firmer, controlled. Back to normal. “I don’t want this to be about me,” he says. “Come on,” I say. “Tell me.” He shakes his head. “That’s all there is to it.” But he does not look at me. He reaches for the lunch bag and hands me a sandwich. I’ve been open with him—more than with anyone. I know there’s more. He’s just not saying it. I’m tired of being talked around. Why can’t anyone just say what they mean? I unwrap my sandwich and take a bite—slow, automatic. He finishes his in three bites, like it’s something to get through. He reaches for another one. Unwraps it—just as a car pulls in fast, tires catching on the gravel. My parents. They are already out of the car. My dad reaches me first. “We called you! You didn’t answer. We were worried.” “I told you—we were going to the park.” “Why didn’t you answer?” “You know I always put my phone on silent when I’m with Dr. Harris.” “You were supposed to be back by now.” “The road was blocked.” His jaw tightens. “You went through that road? Why would you do that?” His voice rises—angry and afraid at the same time. His hands move fast—frustrated, sharp. Like when the ref made a bad call. Then I realize—he’s not talking to me. He’s talking to Dr. Harris. I feel the blood rush to my head. “Why are you talking like I’m not here?” I say. “I am  here. I’ve been here the whole time.” “Why can’t you see that?” I pause. “I’m not something you need to fix.” I look at my parents. They’re out of breath, faces flushed, stunned—and suddenly I see it: they look older than I remember. Fragile. Like they’re the ones who might break. I turn to Dr. Harris. He’s calm. Silent. “He knows what happened,” Dr. Harris says. His voice is firm—maybe too firm. He finally looks up. “I told you he could handle it.” For a second, he says nothing, then, “He’s remembering.” “Mike, Jimmy, and Manuel. I remember them,” I say. I almost laugh. “Can’t believe those assholes left for college without me.”  “I need to finish high school. I need to catch up with them.” My parents freeze. They glance at each other. I can’t tell if they’re about to laugh or cry. My mom actually laughs—sharp and surprised. But her hands are still clenched, like she does not believe it yet. “You’ll catch up with them soon enough,” she says. “You can give them hell when you do.” The tension softens. Not gone, but loosening. Like everyone’s remembering how to breathe. My dad turns to Dr. Harris. “Sam needs to get to physical therapy. Is it okay if we take him now? I will call you later.” “Yeah, anytime.”  I reach for the lunch bag, but he stops me. “Leave it, Sam. I’ll bring it back next time I see you.” As I walk away with my parents, I start telling them how we used to scare little kids at Mr. Olivera’s. “Of course we know,” my mom says—like it’s something she’s been holding onto for both of us. My dad turns to me. “I’m sorry, Sam,” he says, resting a hand on my shoulder. “When we couldn’t reach you today, we panicked. We drove by the school, but you were already gone. So we came here.” “After the accident… seeing you in the hospital, in a coma—we didn’t know if you’d wake up. It was the hardest thing we’ve ever been through. And now, we just can’t help but worry all the time.” “It’s ok, Dad.” I place my hand over his. My mom rests her hand on my back—gentle, steady. As I climb into the car, I glance back at Dr. Harris—still sitting on the bench. I don’t know what he’s thinking, but he looks like someone who needs help too. He watches us go. *** Dr. Harris tells himself today was a turning point. They’ve suffered enough. This should be the start of something better. Taking Sam down that road was a risk—especially without telling his parents. But it worked. Sam didn’t just remember—he faced it. He remains on the bench, unmoving. I don’t know what I would’ve done if my friends had been hurt. And then—without warning—the memories arrive. Peter and Juan. He sees them here again—this park, these benches. Juan shoving his arm. Peter laughing. Daniel, don’t be a chicken. Ask the girl out. He hadn’t said their names in years. The road comes back—too fast, too narrow, the curve coming up too soon, and then the feeling that everything had tipped, as if the world had spun sideways and couldn’t be put back. He remembers thinking he could handle it. That he was in control. He closes his eyes. Tries to keep it out. But it’s not the crash that stays with him. It’s Sam’s voice. I’m not something you need to fix. The words hit too hard. His breath stutters. Hands tremble. It was an accident.   You didn’t mean to hurt anyone.   It’s done now. That should be enough. It should be. But it isn’t. He glances at his phone. Missed calls. One after another. He doesn’t check them. Just sits. Still watching. Still waiting. The benches in the park stay empty. Luis Chamorro is a writer from Nicaragua, now living in Miami. His fiction and nonfiction explore memory, identity, and the emotional texture of both personal and professional fracture, often blending emotional realism with philosophical inquiry. He holds degrees in Engineering and Business Administration from the University of Texas at Austin and Carnegie Mellon University. Before turning to writing, he led international operations in the coffee industry. The Detour is his first submitted short story.

Half Past a Monkey’s Ass Well it’s half-past a monkey’s ass (or a quarter- past a nightmare) and my skull is a glass jar full of fireflies and all the clouds in the next county over are aflame and the wind is stirring things up a little and there’s a wolf with a wounded bird in its mouth and a dead tree on a hill with nothing but phantom limbs and the frogs are tapping out some kind of Morse Code to each other and there’s an old beer bottle sitting on a fence- post (for who knows how many years) upon which a lone dragonfly is perched trying to tune in his tiny radio. Dark Summer Winds (Tanka) The sky belongs to the bats and crickets at night, but the dark summer  winds smelling of mimosa      and rain belong to the trees.

Alice knew they didn’t want her there, but she didn’t let go of Mark’s hand. Their parents had gone to ask the ICU nurse to make her leave. She’d come to donate blood. They didn’t want it. Mark was still unconscious. She couldn’t stop looking at him. She hadn’t seen him since Dad threw her out of the house years ago. He must have gotten that motorcycle he’d always wanted. The road rash was bad. Mark’s eyes fluttered open, and she squeezed his hand. “Hey, I’m here,” she whispered. She wondered if he’d recognize her with her long hair. With laugh lines. His bloodied lips moved, and she leaned in. These would be the first words he said to her since she came out. Since she decided to live as his sister instead of his brother. His voice was hoarse in the shell of her ear. “Go… away.” Adrienne Rex is an aspiring author from Houston, Texas. Her stories take after their author, meaning they’re usually imaginative and offbeat. When she’s not making her daydreams pay rent (otherwise known as writing), she’s drawing, reading, or being dragged around by her dog on what may charitably be called a walk. Her work has been published by the Moonstone Arts Center, Gabby and Min’s Literary Review, and Dug Up Magazine.

Our Possible Lives Born into what we are, with no recourse or recompense. Who could have imagined such a time and  such a place? Everything so sad and hollow,   nebulous hours, skies full of ash. A mess of things behind, a mess of things ahead. Our possible lives drift about like  bits of conversations overheard on a bus, the dead blooming like weeds in overgrown fields. An indifferent wind blows each moment through the days and the years and we never did  end up doing  much of anything. A Dog Or a Wave I wasn’t born to be immortal, never had it in me to hustle that way. Let my poems be sputtering  torches in the void. Should someone find one on their journey,   may it lighten their way long enough to allow  them to continue just a little while more, like a smile from a dog or a wave from someone you actually want to see. Reminder: Hey you dumbass wretched half-baked saints, you slapdash sinners,  you feckless dupes  selling your garbage pail souls to a lesser demon’s lackey the first chance you get, you wackos still dreaming of beauty in the face  of the machinations of the dull and monstrous kings who bleed you like  the dumb animals you are, you 5 time suicides, you muses to the damned, you elegant weirdos, you fucking mooks, you losers dreaming of victory, too close  to the sun with your paper bag wings, you knuckleheaded fools forever rushing in where angels  wouldn’t dare — listen, there’s no time left  for your bullshit  or mine. We’re already gone, and the void  offers no rewards for our best intentions. Eternity is a long time not to exist, so quit fucking around. Take your grubby little fingers, plunge them into the fierce and bitter heart of yourself and eat. The People Who've Been to Hell and Back  The people who've been to hell and back, you know it right away, even if they're too polite to talk about it. You can hear it in their voices and smell it on their jackets. There’s a look in their eyes that makes you nervous. Get a few drinks in them and they’ll loosen up a bit, tell you  how Dante only saw the guest rooms and never set foot in the  dirty parts of town. The people who've been to hell and back will not suffer bad poetry or good intentions. They have great fashion sense and the best record collections. They find the beauty and the terror in all the places you never thought to look. They'll tell you hell is just like  the most terrible things you've dreamed only you don't wake up. They can see all your secrets as if they were branded in light upon your skin. They could tell you your fate like a cheap vaudeville trick, reveal your final destination  in great and unwarranted detail, but by the time they got around to it you’d be already there.

Cold I used to be a tree leaves of ambition now I cannot find  myself in sudden  snow. Yes, I would  melt in your hands a gray towel to soak up. What washed away washed me ashore, cold sand scratching  skin. My body yearns  in dry winter air. E & K 4EVA It’s the running office joke.                                                     And maybe it’s cool. It’s high school. Both of you laugh silently  at the mouth of the hallway.                               I never would have known  them behind me if not for the muscles  whispering when he flexed in his black shirt,  leaning against a board full of push                               pins, and the printer having ceased– finally– it's endless work. Houseboat Sleeping on a houseboat– the world     a soft           earthquake, what creaks if not the heart this worn on marina water        ropes tugging at your limits. Climb the ladder to the wheel and pretend to steer this stupid thing in the only way it was never meant to work. How Good We Have It     I turn the shower knob clockwise and fly open the curtains. I shiver even though the world burns beyond my walls. No one in the mirror. An empty plastic bottle of Listerine (a puddle of nuclear winter-blue at the bottom). Half-open toiletry bag, though I have not vacationed in years. Inside, a travel toothbrush. Cheap plastic. Did you know we eat a credit card a week? And so, this is what my body knows. Filled to gills with the promise of money, money itself being its own shaky promise. Power? Freedom? When  I step out of the tub, dripping pieces of me that are not me, having soaked in a week of being alive in a borrowed and now mechanical but breathing  body, artificial as I am, inessential,  keeping the past alive with LASIK eyes, a genuine VIN– the wet bottoms  of my feet collect accumulated fur  of my animal in a midcentury rug, a shedding body that has become part of another one. Therapy A tree of marbles, faded– fruit, or poisonberry, with  its long and tired branches carrying the weight  it never knows, sags  in front of the new and bustling market in the center of the city. Breathes in the fumes of passing cars. Me, too,  and the lanternflies, on a  road to feeling meaning.  O, to have an insect graze  my leg before the sun  does the same– I want  to arm wrestle the emotions I can’t hold on to, where  our elbows lock on a surface  that is not temporary, palms sweaty with each other. Put me  in a tournament where I make it to the final match– against joy, the highest seed– and win.  If the necessary muscles  are sore the next morning, weak and wise and hopeful–  the wind reminding me,  the strong tree bending– I’ll take the rematch.  Each time. For as long  as it takes. Free Boba Tea at the blood bank without your sister the weight room  without your strength at North Market  without money the soft spheres in this tea go down  easy which is unlike  me January 2023 if anyone asks I'm at the bar to fight winter depression a clear straw  indicates intention water flowing however I can get it just as sun emits light that satiates I'll dance eventually to the best  of my ability handing back black  straws to whoever asks in the lingering holiday lights that spell a start to a year that was never new being one continual floodgate of all existence pouring into my hands into my can I'm dancing the beluga James Croal Jackson is a Filipino-American poet working in film production. His latest chapbook is A God You Believed In  (Pinhole Poetry, 2023). Recent poems are in ITERANT, Stirring , and The Indianapolis Review . He edits The Mantle Poetry from Nashville, Tennessee . ( jamescroaljackson.com )